About Nomades Project

When I came to new Zealand 6 years ago, I had to do what most of the people do, in this country and probably in all countries, I had to share a house and live with other people, and to have to move from town to town for a season. Then I found that it's not an option to look to an accommodation place, such as the classic Airbnb and Booking.com.

Maybe for a week, it's doable, but what happens when you are planning tos stay for a month? and 6 months? Then the price turns to be a thing, and it's necessary to change to a different method. After all, those systems are built for tourists, for the guy that want to visit a city for a day. or escape from the city and spend the weekend on the beach. But if you are planning to stay for 6 months in a place, to work, to study, to live, then you are definitely not a tourist. And your points of intereses are gonna be different that if you would.

So let's think of the student and the accommodation that's offered by the university campus, for overseas students. Think in the seasonal worker that comes from the north to work in a farm, the ski instructor that travels to south island to work during the winter, and so on. And maybe the most relevant case, the case of the people that lives in a city, but cannot afford a house, or to rent an entire house, in a city where lives has become so expensive.

Well, that's was me 6 years ago, and honestly still is. I came to New Zealand with the idea of spending a year, having a break from my routing back in Santiago of Chile, learn english, and then return to my country back to my normal life. Well if you are reading this you would probably realise that I'm still in New Zealand 6 years later. i was in Tauranga back then, when I decided to apply to an interesting job offer I found in LinkedIn, it was based in Auckland, and they called me for a interview within 2 days time. I has to leave my cozy (irony) hostel in Tauranga to travel back to Auckland, and since I was travelling in "low cost" mode, I tried finding an accommodation in facebook.

I made the classic "I need a room to stay a few weeks", and hope to find something more convenient that what Airbnb was pointing, and bingo, I got it, I got a place close from my job (yeah, I got the job too) and I got a room a very cheap price, Happy story.

Well not so quick, that was the start of a very funny and long story that i wont tell now, but let's summarise that it was a bit of a crazy house where i came to live. If I say that we were around 25 people living in a property with 3 toilets and two showers, maybe you would get an idea of the "air" in that house.

That was my first experience in a "flatted " house, and since then, I've shared more than a few experiences, some good and bad, but constantly finding problematic to find the right place to live. It's about the price, the location, the people, the parking, the security of the place, the available space, if it's furnished or not, if my bed fit's the room or not, does the room has a wardrove? How many people lives in there?

Can you tell me something about yourselft? What's your age? Whats your work?

And I get it, it is complicated. After all we are not talking about a person that's gonna crash your house for a weekend, right? We are talking of somebody that you are gonna live with, indefinitely. Somebody that you will share the kitchen, the tv, the toilet, and so on. And yet, the way to work it out? mostly Facebook, at least in New Zealand.

The group "Flatmates wanted" collects more than 100k mermbers, and that's just Auckland. Let's extends this to other cities.

And yes, there are other alternatives, Trade me (paid) and NZ Flatmates, to name some, which has probably better reputation than facebook, and some people is happy to pay for a listing with the hope that this will attract "the right people" (this is not a invented expression, I'm actually quoting).

So let's get started

This started fun. Obviously I've been developing stuff for years, managing websites, endhacing saas platforms, designing databases, working with cloud platforms, and so on, but I never had the chance to do it completely from scratch. I started many project that just died on the POC stage, but later putting everything on place in order to build a secure, stable, scalable project, it's something different. It's a lot of work, obviously, but also many details that you touched as developer, but that you never went in deep.

So what happens when you want to put all the pieces together and you don't have any help? Yeah, you come to learn a lot. And that's the funny part of it. Nothing better than bringing a real life problem to life to upskill.